for people who care about the West

What’s at stake in the evolution debate

On my desk is the fragment of
a tooth from an ancient camel that roamed the area around Fossil,
Ore., 40 million years ago. My kids and I unearthed it on a summer
camping trip, and today I found myself fingering it as I read yet
another story about the evolution "debate."

This
controversy pits Darwin’s concept of evolution and natural
selection against "intelligent design," which asserts that life is
so complex that it must reflect a guiding intelligence. Mindful
that the teaching of creationism has been barred by the courts,
intelligent design advocates are careful not to name the designer,
but their arguments postulate a creation that was perfect and
unchanging; in other words, divine.

Across the country
and throughout the West, school boards are struggling with this
issue, often seeking incoherent "compromises" that satisfy no one.
They must certainly confuse students. In Utah, for example, a
conservative state senator recently withdrew his plan to require
instruction in "divine design," but only after being assured by the
state superintendent of public instruction that human evolution
would not be taught in Utah schools.

Meanwhile, in a
recent sit-down with Texas journalists, President Bush weighed in
on the issue: "both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people
can understand what the debate is about." Many may feel —
well, fair enough. Give this intelligent design idea equal time, or
at least a fair hearing. What’s the problem with that?

The problem is that there simply is no debate in the
scientific world about the validity of evolution. After a century
and a half of research, there is near-universal agreement among
biologists that Darwin’s principle of natural selection,
coupled with modern knowledge of genetics, explains the development
and workings of life on earth. This consensus is fundamental to
modern medicine, to genetics, to embryology, to the classification
of plants and animals, and to every other branch of biological
science.

Everywhere we look, the living world shows
evidence of both past and continuing evolution, from the
development of feathers on dinosaurs and birds to the rapid spread
of antibiotic resistance among bacteria. In contrast, "intelligent
design" makes no testable predictions, and it is not supported by
any data at all — certainly nothing as tangible as my fossil
camel tooth.

No, the debate over evolution is not really
about a scientific idea. It is just one part of a struggle over how
Americans understand the world. At issue is this: Will we continue
to be a reality-based society, or not?

Placing our
understanding of reality in the hands of purveyors of belief
— whether they are political ideologues, religious zealots or
corporate spin doctors — would mean that we have decided to
believe what we choose, rather than rely on factual evidence.
Unless compelled by facts, people rarely choose to revise
comfortable assumptions or to make sacrifices. America’s
conversion into a belief-based society would mark the beginning of
an inexorable slide into delusional thinking. Some could argue that
this process is already well-advanced.

Before the
invasion of Iraq, neoconservative members of the Bush
administration disparaged "reality-based" diplomacy as quaint and
old-fashioned. An unnamed senior official was quoted as stating:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

The disastrous course of events in Iraq following our
"victory" there has proved the folly of allowing belief to pre-empt
attention to facts. Any society that believes it is immune to the
basic workings of cause and effect is doomed to decline.

Relying on science to understand reality and to predict
consequences does not diminish religion. For almost all people the
world around, religion fills existence with meaning and provides
moral instruction on how to live. Neither evolution, nor the fact
that the earth is not the center of the universe, nor any other
once "blasphemous" finding of science, threatens religious faith.

Those who condemn science in the name of religion have a
terrible record, ranging from medieval Christian clerics who
plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, to contemporary Islamic
extremists who reject any conclusion that conflicts with their
interpretation of the Koran. How could the United States even
contemplate surrendering our understanding of the world to
purveyors of belief? That surrender will have begun if we allow a
trumped-up debate between science and non-science — evolution
and intelligent design — a place in our education system. The
stakes could not be higher.

Pepper Trail is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). He is a Ph.D. biologist who lives
and writes in Ashland, Oregon.